MARTIN Drury admitted Portsmouth exposed City’s “soft underbelly” after the 5-1 thrashing at Fratton Park.

The Bantams are now six points from safety following the heavy loss in their first game since David Hopkin walked away.

Drury was put in temporary charge as fourth-placed Pompey piled on the misery.

He said: “We’ve been saying it all season but there’s been a real soft underbelly to the group.

“We’ve shown that we can create and score goals but we’re leaving ourselves too much to do.

“I feel for the supporters. They are an unbelievable group and they deserve better.

“It was a very difficult afternoon but I don’t think it was (down to) a lack of effort from the players.

“I know it can look like that from the outside but they care. Today didn’t come down to effort but being beaten by a far better team.”

Drury felt City were “sucker-punched” for the opening penalty after a solid start but was fuming to concede again just before half-time.

“I thought we started reasonably well and contained Portsmouth,” he added. “I saw a little bit of grit and determination early on.

“But when you’re low on confidence, the psychological side of the game is very important.

We got sucker-punched with the penalty, which I thought was soft. But you could see the confidence go from the players.

“If we’d got to half-time at 1-0, we could have reassessed the situation and gathered our thoughts.

“But we then conceded one of the softest and poorest goals from a set-piece.”

Hope Akpan briefly brought City back into it by making it 2-1 but they got caught on the counter-attack as Pompey hit back with two quick-fire goals before adding a fifth late on.

Drury said: “I’ve got to take some responsibility for the amount of goals we did concede second half.

“I tried to make a change to get us back in the game which we’ve done and then go and score a goal.

“But then you become a bit more susceptible to conceding because you are chasing the game.

“When you have good attacking players, you must have a responsible structure behind the ball to make sure if it’s lost, we can put pressure on the ball quickly.

“But again there was a bit of naivety behind the ball and we got done on the counter.

“You play a team like Portsmouth, who have got players with pace and power who can hurt you, and they did that well.”